telescopes

The Roque de Los Muchachos is a spectacular place to watch the sunset. For one thing, you’re usually above the clouds (which is one reason the observatory is there.) In fact, sometimes the clouds are so much lower than the Roque that the sun sets well below you. This means that your shadow on a wall is taller than you, and the shadows of your legs go on forever….

This morning when I finished work I went up to the Roque itself to relax and admire the view. Helen Loth kindly agreed to take a photo of me with my book and the telescopes. While we were doing that, Carmelo the raven came to say “Hello”. Well no, her really cae to…

The William Herschel Telescope at sunset. . The William Herschel Telescope was for many years the biggest and best optical telescope in Europe (until GranTeCan opened in 2009). The main mirror is 4.2 m across (165″, or 13′ 9″) which astronomers call “a good light bucket”. It’s rather old as world-class telescopes go, since it opened in 1987, but it still produced excellent science. In fact data from the WHT…

A very Merry Christmas to you all. (The William Herschel Telescope has a laser to measure atmospheric turbulence, in order to correct for it. But really, it’s very low powered and no danger to flying reindeer. Santa is quite safe.)